The vibrant magentas and bloody reds told the story before the jostling began.

Jack Parrish’s plane hurtled toward a circle of violent thunderstorms, where updrafts slingshot air into the atmosphere so fast and high that water droplets froze to hail, reflecting on radar in Kool-Aid-colored hues.

“We call them rings of fire,” said Parrish, a 36-year veteran flight director with NOAA’s Hurricane Hunters. “The reds and magentas, that is where the really bad happens.”

Even after months of review, the senior hurricane specialist who wrote a post mortem on Matthew calls the rapid intensification an “enigma” — a puzzle that concerns some storm experts, who fear a whittled-down budget for the landmark Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project will see further cuts under the current administration.

The project was launched with a $13 million budget after the historic hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, but has since undergone reductions that shrank its budget to $4.8 million.

“There are things in the atmosphere that we still don’t understand, mysteries and variables that drive weather that we just don’t get,” said Dan Kottlowski, a hurricane expert with AccuWeather. “I am worried about government officials not understanding the problem. We as scientists have to keep putting the problem in front of them.”

Hurricane Matthew over the Bahamas in October 2016.

For Parrish, focusing on the moment is how to keep the concerns about flying into a Category 4 or 5 hurricane at bay.

“It was a wild couple of days,” Parrish said about his flights into Hurricane Matthew. “We only do zero gravity once in a while, and it happened twice in Matthew.”

In Matthew’s post-storm assessment, National Hurricane Center senior storm specialist Stacy Stewart noted that its eye contracted to 6 miles from 34 while strengthening by an “extraordinary” 86 mph.

That happens when the air rushing skyward in circling thunderstorms speeds up, stretching the cylinder of the rotating cyclone vertically so that the diameter of the center shrinks. It’s like ice skaters going into spins. Their twirls quicken as they bring outstretched arms closer to their bodies and over their heads.

The high winds of Hurricane Matthew roar over Baracoa, Cuba, Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2016. The dangerous Category 4 storm blew ashore around dawn in Haiti. It unloaded heavy rain as it swirled on toward a lightly populated part of Cuba and the Bahamas. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Parrish said he is most wary of rapidly intensifying storms on such missions. When a cyclone is deepening quickly, there is no easy way in or out of the eye.

“It’s hard every way,” he said. “We know it’s going to be kind of unpleasant.”

The smallest eye Parrish has been in was just three miles across. When it’s that small, there isn’t much time for data collection, he said.

“When they start to shrink up like that, there are a lot of updrafts and downdrafts and there is no easy way in. It’s hard in every way,” Parrish said.

In 2016, Hurricane Hunter Mike Holmes’ recalled his flight into 2015’s Hurricane Patricia, which in 24 hours deepened from a Category 1 storm to 207 mph.

Hurricane Patricia

He recalled his keyboard clapping up and down, which knocked out programs on his screen. A laptop jostled free of its storage and hurtled the length of the cabin like a missile. Crew members braced against a ricochet that tested limitations — human and machine alike.

Then, at 1:33 p.m. on Oct. 23, 2015, pilots penetrated the storm’s tightly wrapped core into an eye of blue. But it was 1 minute earlier that history was made.

HurricanePatricia’s winds were measured at more than 200 mph. The Pacific Ocean hurricane was well beyond the magnitude of a Category 5 storm. It was the strongest, most intense, hurricane on record.

Hurricane Patricia’s winds reached 215 mph, the strongest on record.

In just 24 hours, Patricia’s winds had ramped up from a modest Category 1 storm to 207 mph — a “remarkable” intensification no one had predicted, and a nightmare scenario for meteorologists entrusted with saving lives.

Storm 2016

About the Author

Kim Miller is the weather reporter for The Palm Beach Post.

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